Welcome to the Cafe du Watchog, also called RPGen. We're a sandbox style Pokemon site with a focus on everyday life in the Pokemon world. Trainers, Pokemon, criminals, cosmic forces, and normal citizens are all welcome to join in the fun. Kick back and enjoy a cup of coffee with us!

Caleb watched as Eddie and Marron got to work. Not the best way to introduce yourself to the new staff, to say the least. Caleb probably could have been a bit less direct about the whole thing, but then that just wasn't Caleb, was it?

He took a sip of his coffee before turning back to Silver, "I guess you met Gazriel down there."

"Yeah, interesting thing about him. Not sure why, but you'll probably end up forgetting everything you saw regarding him in about an hour or so. Some psychic hypnosis thing. Fortunately..."

He produced a small notebook and handed it to Silver. "...there's ways to get around that. It's worth a read, but I'll just give you the cliff notes version. You may remember when I hired Gazriel, back when he was a kirlia. I had assigned him janitorial duty, including the basement. After a few days, he kept complaining about headaches. I'm sure you remember that much, yes?"

"After he evolved everything went to hell," Caleb continued. "He asked to live in the basement, which I thought was weird, but didn't really concern myself with. Then he kept inviting strange people and pokemon. Friends of his for 'poker night'. This went on for about month. Then he brought Styx down there...actually I don't think you remember her, do you? That weavile with the black choker? I mean, you might have seen her once or twice, but she never actually worked here."

"She came back completely different. Kept calling herself the 'Matriarch of the Void'. Her mind had become completely broken. I had to send her to a sanitarium. That was the red flag I needed. I decided to go down there and see what had happened, only to find out that he'd made the basement into...well, what you saw earlier today. I don't even dare to know how he got everything down there. Teleport is my guess. He'd created a cult down there. His own followers sacrificed him before committing mass suicide themselves." He took another sip of his coffee. "You always wanted to know why I closed the coffee shop down for three weeks? Well, there you go."

"That is a very good question," Caleb said. "One I didn't find out until later. I kept tabs on who Gazriel kept bringing to the basement. About half humans and half pokemon. All of the pokemon, without exception, were Psychic. I'd gotten the name of a few of the humans and ran a background check on them. They were all psychic. And that's when I turned to the gothitelles. To hopefully find out what the hell happened down there. What they found was worrying. Apparently there's something very...wrong...down in the basement. Something with very strong psychic powers. And yet it's unidentifiable. Like a noise in the dark. You know it's there, but you don't know where or what it is. I don't have a clue what it is, but it was powerful enough to turn even a dark type like Styx into a quivering mess and will Gazriel and his cult into mass suicide. We weren't able to identify it, but at least we'd found a method of luring it into one of the lower chambers and locking it there, to limit its influence."

A lock that Silver no doubt broke.

He finished his coffee and set it on the table. "That's when I made Rule Number One. The twins insisted on keeping tabs on it. I wasn't too happy with the idea, as I didn't want them to end up like Gazriel, but they rotated watch every few days, to ensure that neither of them would be in too deep."

"That I do not know," Caleb said. "I do wish I had time to talk to him." There was a brief pause as he had to ask an obvious question. "What did he tell you?" he asked. "Leave nothing out, no matter how insignificant you think it might be."

"He said to go find a Sarcha. His sister. To tell her that he tried. That we'd set something in motion, and he was dying. And to keep the ribbon that he was tied up with. I think Sunset still has it." He glances at his fingers. "And he showed us what he was fighting." And when they were going to die.

He sighed a bit. "Little more than what I already knew. Perhaps Sarcha can tell me more. I imagine she'll do well enough to make herself found. After all, she knew when this day was coming."

He stood up. "Read the rest of the book at your leisure. It details the cult quite intimately. It'll give you an idea of what we're dealing with. I will go find Sarcha. I have something else for you, though."

He handed Silver an address. "I'd spent the last year looking for the previous owner of this coffee shop. I'd...rather not talk about that encounter. What I do know is he'd sold most of the luxuries to a delphox by the name of Solomon. He lives in nearby Accumula. Find out anything you can from him."

Silver takes the address and the book. This is just what he needs. "All right. I'll head over there." It's not like he can say no. And at this point, it's not even because Caleb's his boss, but because this is a mess that Silver let happen.

"Good. You don't have to go right now, but I'd prefer you do it at your earliest convenience." He stood up to go back to the front before adding, "And don't get too down on yourself. This was inevitable."